MIT Adopts Ripple Validator to Advance Consensus and Blockchain
Research

April 12, 2016 06:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Connection Science, a research initiative
that applies data and analytics to build better societies, today
announced that it is the first academic institution in North America to
participate in a global Byzantine consensus database. To advance the
frontier of blockchain research, MIT is running a validator for the Ripple
Consensus Ledger, a distributed ledger that settles global transactions
in real-time and is the foundational ledger for the digital asset XRP.
Ripple validators are servers that confirm transactions on the network.

"In this new experiment with Ripple, we are taking MIT's experiential
research approach to the blockchain, and we anticipate this
collaboration will provide us new opportunities to test and deploy data
applications and research," said MIT Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland.
"We’re pleased that the Ripple team has fostered a substantive dialog
with us about the future of finance through the decentralization of
digital currencies and value."

Led by Prof. Pentland and Managing Director David Shrier, MIT Connection
Science is developing novel blockchain, financial services, and
enterprise data projects and initiatives, including open-source code
projects under the Internet
Trust Consortium. In order to equip executives and entrepreneurs to
navigate financial technology disruption, MIT Connection Science is also
launching the "Future
Commerce: fintech innovation" course online, in collaboration with
online learning platform GetSmarter.

"We’re extremely excited for MIT to run a Ripple validator. Having a
globally renowned institution like MIT contribute to the consensus
process on Ripple fortifies the resiliency and security of the network.
Beyond that, it’s incredible to have a partner we respect so much share
the mission of enabling money to move like information does on the web
today," said Stefan Thomas, Chief Technology Officer at Ripple.

Ripple validators are lightweight systems equivalent to running an email
server. According to Ripple, the Ripple network has never lost or
reversed a single transaction in three years of production. Ripple’s
technology has been deployed through real-money pilots with 30 different
banks around the world, and recently closed 20 million ledgers, in
comparison to Bitcoin - which has closed about 400,000 blocks.

About MIT Connection Science

MIT Connection Science is a new research initiative at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology that applies data/analytics to build better
societies, under MIT's new Institute for Data, Systems & Society.

Ripple provides global financial settlement solutions to ultimately
enable the world to exchange value like it already exchanges information
– giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV). Ripple solutions lower the
total cost of settlement by enabling banks to transact directly without
correspondent banks and with real-time certainty, optionally using the
digital asset XRP to further reduce liquidity costs. Banks around the
world are partnering with Ripple to improve their cross-border payment
offerings, and to join its growing, global network of financial
institutions and market makers.